Effect of Land Management on Soil Hydraulic Conductivity in Gidan Kwano, Niger State, Nigeria

Hydraulic conductivity is one of the most important parameters for flow and transport related phenomena in soil and also a criterion for measuring soil ability to transfer water. There is concern arising from the suitability, efficiency and ease of the different measuring methods use under different land management practices. The purpose of this paper is to determine and evaluate soil hydraulic conductivity under different land management practices which include forest land (teak and Melina plantation), grassland and maize cultivated land using the constant head method. The measurement is at different depth of 0 - 15 cm, 15 - 25 cm, 25 - 50 cm, 50 - 75 cm. The limited means of each land use were used to compare the result obtained through statistical means. All tests were carried out using SPSS at a significance level of 0.05. An ANOVA test was conducted to check if each of the land use is significantly different. The soil in forest zone (Teak plantation and Gmalina plantation) had a significantly high bulk density as 1.7533 cm-3 and 1.6967 cm-3 respectively at depth 50 - 75 cm compared to the low bulk density in the grass, maize cultivated land as 1.5000 cm-3 and 1.4833 cm-3 respectively at depth 50 - 75 cm. However, soil hydraulic conductivity was significantly high in the grass site or soil at the surface with 2.8833 cm·h-1. Results obtained from the different land use serve as Knowledge of variability of soil that can assist in defining the best strategies for sustainable soil management through the provision of vital information for estimating soil susceptibility to erosion, hydrological modelling and efficient planning of irrigation projects.